Thursday, February 15, 2018

pencil sketch of a Nazi by Dr K Prabhakar Rao


MARIO ROATTA.. FASCIST. ITALY WW II
He was an Italian General accused of war crimes particularly in Yugoslavia.On 10 November 1943, the Allies requested that Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio remove Roatta from his post as Chief of Staff of the Italian Army due to Yugoslavia's charges that he committed war crimes. On 12 November, Roatta was dismissed from his post. ] Yugoslavia unsuccessfully requested Roatta's extradition, and he along with other suspected Italian war criminals were never tried. Britain has been accused of leniency in an attempt to bolster the remnants of the fascist government so as to guarantee an anti-communist post-war Italy. Historian Alessandra Kersevan and journalist Rory Carroll have accused the Italian public and media of repressing their collective memory of the atrocities committed during World War II, and of "historical amnesia", citing the forgiveness of Roatta and the jailing of two Italian filmmakers, who depicted the Italian invasion of Greece, as examples of historical revisionism. 
On 5 March 1945, Roatta escaped from the Virgilio Army Hospital in Rome. A reward of one million lire ($10,000) was offered for his capture. The following day a "mild mass meeting" took place at the Italian royal palace in protest of his escape and escalated into a riot ending with one person dead. ] On 4 April, Sergeant Stuart W. Mathes put up a personal reward of $20,000 for Roatta's capture. Roatta fled to Spain, where he lived under the protection of dictator Francisco Franco. In Italy, he was convicted and sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment plus one year of solitary confinement. His sentence was overturned by the Italian High Court of Appeal in 1948 Beginning in 1964, a number of Roatta's works were published. He returned to Rome in 1966, and lived there until his death on 7 January 1968.

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